I had never liked the cold, but as I took my first step into the frost-covered fields east of Lowmarch, I could feel something deeper than temperature gnawing at me. The wind here didn't just chill you—it remembered things. The kind of wind that whispered through dead forests and brushed against war relics buried for decades. It was the kind of wind that knew my name before I spoke it aloud.
Three years. That's how long it had been since I died in my world.
Three years since my soul had been thrown into the chaos of this one—into the body of Lucien Veyrarax, the last of his name. The name that now carried a burden I hadn't asked for. But here I was, Kael. A ghost in a sovereign shell.
After the fight with Vakill, things had shifted. I didn't kill him—not because I couldn't, but because something told me I shouldn't. He'd fought with conviction, fury, pride in the bloodline I now inadvertently carried. And when I disarmed him—literally, took his right arm in a flash cut that nearly shattered my own hand—I did it out of necessity, not hatred. He collapsed. And instead of finishing him, I stood over him and made a choice.
I gave him the old exo-arm I'd kept hidden in my gear. One of the last prototypes I salvaged from a dismantled Sentry frame. It wasn't pristine, but it was functional. It hummed with stripped-down starcore energy and enhanced feedback response. It would serve him well. I told him one thing: "Use it to rebuild, not destroy."
Vakill had changed since then. He still carried the weight of Lucien's old ways, but there was something new in his eyes. A quiet understanding. Maybe even respect.
But now wasn't the time for reflection.
Ironlan called to me.
The easternmost outpost of the Veyrax Kingdom, Ironlan stood where the old world once drew national borders. Located deep within what they once called Germany, it was a fortress now. Built from reinforced blacksteel and hollowed obsidian towers, it had once been a mercenary hub—my hub. I'd worked here before I even knew what the Veyrax line was. Before Beteraxe. Before Lucien. Back then, I had forged a sword with my own hands. Reflamax.
Reflamax wasn't legendary because of myth or magic. It was steel, tempered with electromagnetic threading, layered with graphene lacing, and embedded with heat cells capable of destabilizing molecular bonds on contact. It was a tool. A weapon. A promise I buried two years ago beneath the ruins of my old merc camp after Beteraxe took its place.
And now I needed it again.
---
The march to Ironlan was brutal. One thousand four hundred kilometers. I walked them alone. No convoy. No escort. Just a thin pack, a sleeping sheath, and Beteraxe in hibernation mode strapped to my back. The terrain shifted constantly—wetlands, gravel fields, broken highways, forests burned down to skeletal remains. I slept for two hours each night and moved during twilight when the satellites couldn't pick up heat signatures.
Halfway through Romania, I crossed into what was once Hungarian territory. The region was now a neutral zone—a dead zone, more accurately. No trade routes, no patrols, just war relics, collapsed drones, and the bones of old ideologies. There, I fought three raider groups. None of them lived to tell the tale.
I didn't kill because I wanted to.
I killed because they saw a lone traveler with a starcore field and thought I was prey.
At night, I spoke to Lucien in my head. He hadn't returned since that brief moment in the fight with Vakill, but echoes of him lingered—residual whispers in the back of my mind. Memories. Not mine, but his. The Hall of Memories was a cruel mechanic. A vault of someone else's life running parallel to your own.
And yet, I was beginning to understand why he did what he did.
---
By the time I reached Ironlan's western checkpoint, my boots were shredded and my energy cells down to the last 3%. The guards didn't recognize me at first. I didn't blame them. I was gaunt, cloaked in grime, and my thermal signature must've been flickering like a dying lightbulb.
But when I uttered the name "Kael Veyrarax," they opened the gates.
Ironlan hadn't changed much. Towering structures, rotating rail turrets, and a command bunker built straight into the mountainside. But beneath the steel, there were memories. Memories of sitting by fires, hammering steel, arguing with other mercs about the best core converters. And Reflamax. I buried it beneath Outpost Delta—an abandoned forge chamber.
I made my way there without delay. The earth was hard, frozen, but I remembered the marker: a burnt signpost with half the word "Valiant" still legible.
I dug with my hands until my knuckles bled.
Reflamax was still there.
I pulled it out, and for a second, everything stopped. The blade gleamed with residual heat, still sealed in its cryo-sheath. I ran my fingers along the hilt. The haptic interface still responded. I activated it.
The temperature spiked instantly.
The edge hummed.
And I remembered what this blade had once done—cut through eight layers of tank plating in a single arc. It was the weapon meant for moments like the one I was now headed toward.
---
Meanwhile, Vakill wasn't idle. He and the messenger, Elen Raithe, had begun pulling strings. Eastborn—the bastard prince, half-Veyrax blood, trained in flashcut doctrine and politically protected by over ten borderhouses—was now a name whispered in council chambers.
And according to Vakill's message sent through encrypted courier drone, Eastborn had recently reached Form 8.1.
He was twenty-six.
His flash cut speed had clocked in at Mach 1464. My current best? 86 Mach. The gap was laughable.
"Start building the armor," Vakill wrote in the final line.
I already had.
---
The Firstborn Armor Project wasn't a dream—it was a necessity. A powered combat exoshell integrated directly into my nervous system, synced with starcore bursts and exo-reactive response loops. Adaptive shielding. Retractable arm blades. Overpressure hydraulic joints. And one thing Eastborn would never expect: a concealed high-power multi-caliber railgun hidden in the right thigh compartment. It fired 9mm, 5.56 NATO, 12 gauge, and .50 BMG. I called it the SHTR-7, short for "Shitstorm 7."
I didn't expect it to win the fight.
But I did expect it to buy me enough time to.
Eastborn didn't know I'd returned.
He thought I died with Lucien.
But I was very much alive. And this time, I was bringing Reflamax with me.
---
I sat beneath the steel canopy of Ironlan's outpost workshop, dim lights flickering overhead, sparks occasionally dancing as the engineers carried out maintenance on old exo-suits. The western checkpoint had welcomed me without much suspicion, especially after I'd shown my mercenary ID from two years ago. Back then, I was just another blade-for-hire, passing through with quiet goals and a heavy past. Now, I was walking the same paths with ghosts trailing close, but a clearer sense of purpose.
The Reflamax blade rested in my hands. It hadn't aged a day.
I unearthed it an hour ago, buried beneath a slab of concrete and rebar where I'd left it in secrecy. Still sheathed in the carbon-locked case I forged it in, its tech-readout lit up when I grasped the hilt: magnetic fields still functional, heat core stabilized, edge alignment within 0.0001 mm tolerance. My fingers itched. It wanted to be used again.
But Reflamax alone wouldn't be enough.
Vakill had sent word the night before. He'd intercepted classified data: Eastborn had reached Form 8.1. That was nearly the top of human kinetic evolution—far beyond anything I'd ever seen in my days as a soldier or mercenary. With his bloodline, access to top-tier exosword data, and raw talent, it wasn't shocking.
What was shocking, was how much time I didn't have.
I activated the folding console mounted to the wall and began uploading the Firstborn Armor blueprints. Originally, it was supposed to be a reactive kinetic suit—dense alloys, moderate flexibility, designed for overwhelming close combat with integrated ammo feeds. But now? That wouldn't cut it.
I deleted half the code in one swipe.
I started reworking the design from scratch.
Instead of 18mm steel composite, I replaced the entire frame with 2.5-inch tungsten carbide plates, restructured for overlapping kinetic dispersal. Lighter than it sounded—because I'd already found ways to bond it with graphene fibers, reducing weight by nearly 40% while enhancing shock absorption.
The Shitstorm-7 module—originally meant for thigh deployment—was a dumb idea in hindsight. Having the multi-caliber gun that could fire 9×19mm, 5.56 NATO, 12-gauge, and even .50 BMG strapped to the thigh slowed mobility. Instead, I shifted it into the forearm compartment, retractable, autoloaded from a compact belt feed on the spine. One flip, one lock, one press.
Boom.
There was also the issue of cognitive strain. Wearing the armor at full output pushed the nervous system beyond normal tolerances. And when you're bleeding energy just standing still? You collapse mid-fight. That happened in testing. But I'd learned from that failure.
That's where the helmet system came in—something most exosworders neglected. I embedded a neural dampener, metabolic accelerators, and the latest bio-synchronizer array into the helmet chassis. It wouldn't just protect me. It would think with me.
The key was Starcore.
People think it's a myth—some pre-Imperium tech or alien nonsense. But I've lived with it long enough to understand what it is: an energy reactor hardwired to my own physiology. Since it woke up three years ago inside Lucien's body—my body—it's kept me alive through battles I had no right surviving.
Now it was time to push it.
By rerouting energy draw and syncing all hardware through a triple-staged flux core, I could overclock the armor up to 140% output for short bursts—just over 4 hours before system strain risked permanent damage to my body. But that was enough.
Better yet, I configured a low-consumption mode—passive defense, basic strength boosts, no overdrive. In that state, Starcore's regeneration actually surpassed the armor's power drain. In theory, I could wear it indefinitely.
And I would.
Tomorrow, Vakill would test the completed unit. The final sync between armor and Reflamax was scheduled. Then, we'd ship it covertly to the duel site. He'd already arranged for delivery.
Eastborn wouldn't see it coming.
But I wasn't done.
While running diagnostics on the armor plating, I remembered something. The material seemed... dull. Even with the density, even with shock absorbers, it lacked that absolute resilience. Then I remembered the technique.
Material Hardening.
I hadn't learned it from any scroll or system. It wasn't passed down in some imperial archive. I invented it. Or so I thought.
When I showed it to Vakill that night—compressed molecular enhancement using controlled kinetic vibration and electrical charge—he raised an eyebrow.
"You know... that looks exactly like what the Veyrax bloodline used to use."
He wasn't wrong. Veyrax III, Kazakov Hyau Veyrax, was said to have developed a technique to harden armor and blades on command. And it was passed on—to Eastborn, to the fourth Veyrax, to others in the line.
But here's the difference:
I figured it out alone.
Which meant I understood it better. I could control it. Not just full-body reinforcement. I could focus the hardening wherever I willed—the tip of Beteraxe. My torso. My head. My weak points were now fortresses, while I left the rest fluid and flexible.
No one else could do that.
Not even Eastborn.
And that would be his undoing.
I finalized the arm systems—adaptive knuckles with microshock feedback, magnetized grip locks for Reflamax and Beteraxe. I lowered the helmet over my head one last time and stared at myself in the reflective HUD.
I didn't look like Kael anymore.
I looked like something else.
A ghost wearing the bones of a dead king.
Lucien Veyrarax.
"Tomorrow, I'd wear this skin in front of a crowd who thought his legacy had vanished with his disappearance—unaware the bloodline thrived, and the empire only grew stronger in his shadow."
Let's see if they still believe that after they watch Eastborn die.